How to Make Money on Fiverr Without Selling Your Soul

I joined fiverr a little over a year ago. Initially, I was just checking out the site to see what the fuss was all about.

When fiverr originally launched, it caught a ton of press and exposure because of their unique business model. Not only that, it was super interesting to see all of the crazy things people were willing to do for 5 bucks.

INTRO TO FIVERR

If you don’t know what fiverr is all about, you can signup on their website and list “gigs” that you are willing to do for $5. Once you sell enough gigs, you become eligible to offer higher priced gigs and can make more money.

Do you actually get $5 bucks for every gig you complete? No. Fiverr takes a 20% cut on every gig. Therefore, your $5 in your pocket payout is now $4. Take out PayPal processing fees and your cut is just under $4 on a 5 dollar gig.

THE FIVERR CHALLENGE

This is where the real challenge of making money on Fiverr comes in. What are you really going to do for a measly $4? What kind of service or product can you offer that provides value but doesn’t bust your hump in the process?

After spending a ton of time on Fiverr’s website looking at popular selling gigs and top rated users, it was clear that the best gigs are either totally unique or completely crazy. However, if you look hard enough, you’ll find some real legitimate gigs for cheap that sell like hot cakes.

You can find everything from logo designers, video editors, business consultants, SEO services, and tons more. Now whether or not you are getting the highest quality service for 5 bucks is a completely different story. I would recommend sticking with sellers that have high ratings and great testimonials.

CREATING YOUR VERY FIRST GIG

Now that you know what the site is all about, let’s talk about how you actually make money on Fivver. The first step is signing up on their website at www.fiverr.com. It’s totally free to sign up and doesn’t cost you any money. You can join using your Facebook account or with an email address. However, if you sign up with your Facebook account you can complete 100% of your user profile (more on that later).

Once you’re logged in, you need create a gig. Under the new and improved Fiverr (V2), you click the Sales link in the top navigation. From there, you can click on “My Gigs” from the right hand side of the page. Now you should see a big green button that says “ADD A NEW GIG”.

PROFIT VS PASSION

Here is where you are going to create your gig (aka the service or product you plan to sell for 5 bucks). Start by creating a gig title. Fiverr suggests you offer something that you are really good at. It’s important to remember that when you’re first getting started on Fiverr, you can only sell 5 dollar gigs. In other words, even though you’re good at underwater basket-weaving, if it takes you 10 hours to complete a basket it’s probably not worth your time.

Sell something you think is valuable to somebody else but won’t take you forever to complete. Sure, you may think there isn’t much you are willing to do for $5, but that’s not necessarily the point here. The point is you want to start selling enough gigs with good ratings that you can “level up” and start selling “extras”.

LEVELING UP

Extras are add-ons that you can tack on to your gig once you have acheived level 1 seller status. The way to acheive level 1 seller status is to be signed up for at least 30 days with Fiverr and completed 10 orders while maintaining excellent ratings.

You may think 10 orders and excellent ratings is difficult to accomplish. However, I find that if you are offering real value, it’s hard to piss someone off enough to leave you negative feedback. Remember, the key is hitting 10 sales while fulfilling your orders.

KEEPING YOUR PROMISES

Fulfilling orders means delivering your gig on time within the time frame you specified. What’s great is you can specify how long it will take you to complete your gig (up to 29 days) before the user buys it. I would suggest you try delivering your gigs in the shortest amount of time possible. Buyers don’t want to wait and tend to want everything yesterday.

If you set a shorter delivery time than your competition offering a similar gig but takes longer to deliver, you probably have a good shot at selling your gig based on faster turn around time. Besides, you can always change this later and lengthen your delivery time should you get a ton of orders all at once.

PUBLISHING YOUR FIRST GIG

In order to complete your gig listing, you need to pick a category and provide a description. In version 2 of Fiverr, you can format your description text and really make it pop using a simple WYSIWYG editor.

However, before anybody sees your gig description, they will be browsing the website and see your gig picture. Don’t overlook this opportunity because you will need to stand out of the crowd in order to get noticed. Try making your gig thumbnail pop by using bright colors and large, easy to read font that clearly describes your offer.

LEVERAGING THE POWER OF VIDEO

Another thing to note is Fiverr will allow you to upload a video into your gig gallery. Fiverr claims that gigs with videos are viewed almost 3X more often than gigs without video. In addition, one of preset search filters on the website are searching gigs with videos.

Once you have uploaded either a picture or video to your gig gallery, you can tag your gig with up to 5 keywords and provide any special instructions to the buyer (if necessary). Also, if you’re actually selling a physical good rather than a virtual service, you need to specify shipping charges.

Other than that, you’re pretty much done with your first Fiverr gig listing. After you publish your gig, it may need review before going live on the website. My very first gig was automatically reviewed but approved within 24 hours.

PROMOTING YOUR GIG

After your gig has been approved and is listed as active in your Fiverr dashboard, you should start promoting it to your friends, family, and anybody else you think might be interested in buying your product or service. For instance, if you’re on Twitter, tweet it. Tons of friends on Facebook? Post it!

You may be asking yourself, what if you don’t have any friends or family or use social media? Can you still sell gigs on Fiverr? Can you still make money?

Although I firmly believe that you will have more success and sell more gigs if you promote your gig outside of Fiverr, you don’t necessarily need to. I sold my very first gig without doing any promotion at all. I simply threw up a gig and it sold within a few days.

FIRST FIVERR MISTAKE

The success didn’t last long though. I delivered my first gig and received positive feedback from the buyer. At this point, I thought I could leave this thing on cruise control and the orders would continue to roll in.

Wrong. I didn’t receive any orders for months after my first gig sold. It also didn’t help that my gig was suspended because I was inactive on Fiverr’s site for so long. NOTE: Fiverr wants to make sure their community remains active and if you go missing in action, it’s a bad look for Fiverr when buyers place orders that don’t get fulfilled.

So now that I was 4 dollars richer, I knew it was “possible” to make money on Fiverr. How much was yet to be determined. I reactivated my gig and without any other promotion orders continue to roll in. I just completed a gig earlier this evening.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFIT

By no means am I going to become a millionaire selling Fiverr gigs. However, I have learned quite a bit and earned just over $100 in the past month or so. More importantly, Fiverr has helped me gain more confidence in my own ability to sell.

FUTURE ON FIVERR

Moving forward, I will continue selling on Fiverr because I have only scratched the service. My goal is to achieve Level 2 seller status and make more money. 5 dollar gigs are nice but $5, $10, $20, and $40 gig extras are even nicer.

Also, I want to test using video in my gigs as a way to sell. Trust on a site like Fiverr goes a long way. I believe that you can build trust quicker through video if done correctly. This is an experiment I will be testing soon.

Meanwhile, I want to offer more gigs. I started out with only 1 gig but added another similar gig a short time later. The second gig is just now getting some traction and I continue to get great feedback from both.

FAST FIVE DOLLARS

If you are interested in making money on Fiverr, give it a shot and you may surprise yourself. Do your homework though and really think about something you can sell that provides value and doesn’t suck the soul out of you. You may only be a few minutes away from being 5 dollars richer!

Drop a comment below or ask me anything about my Fiverr experience so far. If you want to check out my profile, visit www.fiverr.com/seldomstatic.

Still working on the follow-up and entertaining the idea of jumping back on Fiverr. However, last I checked, they take 20% regardless of how many gigs a customer may order. So yes, on $100, they take $20.

fiverr has been my number one source of income.It has really helped me.but promotion outside fiverr is the problem

Mike

March 1, 2015

Personally I find it the easiest to start making money quickly on Fiverr by providing a service that is in high demand, such as video testimonials. These days video testimonials are all the rage and if you’re not extremely shy in front of a camera, you can certainly start making some money by investing in a decent quality camera. And pretty much that’s it! Just follow your intuition and have fun doing it, and understand that at the beginning you’re not going to be making a lot of money shooting videos of yourself, but if you look at the ones on Fiverr that have 2000 plus positive reviews, you know that there is serious money to be made if you persist, which is what I’m aiming to do… so far I’ve got about 10 but I’m optimistic that through hard work and dedication I’ll be driving the numbers up steadily..

The key is creating value for others while having fun doing it, and be consistent.. and remember: creating a service is much easier than creating a product.

Hey Mike — Thanks for dropping by and sharing your experience on Fiverr so far. Totally agree that creating a service is easier but products are typically more profitable (aka better return on your investment and/or time, energy, etc). On Fiverr, it’s all about delivering value and if you’re getting orders with positive feedback, you know you’re on the right track. Sounds like you’re off to a great start!

akira007

May 23, 2015

Hi everyone, i can give you some simple tricks to keep your acount on 100% all the time by fiverr, and some smaller advices i learned by the way working for fiverr.
First of all hi everyone who reading this article about fiverr, or who is going to try making a living from fiverr…its possible!!
I am toprated seller now for three years doing ebook covers, in beginning i only did normal ebook covers like 1000 others on fiverr for 5$:-/….so a new idea needed to come.I found a Niche for ebooks Createspace-at that time i was the only one doing this at all on fiverr-the orders started moveing in faster and faster.Problem was i was now offering a service for 30$ but the work i did was worth much more and i got to many orders-now my gig is starting at 100$ and i still earn pretty good on fiverr at least 10-15 orders each month, instead of selling your soul or get a burn out syndrome.The funny part when i was selling for 5 $ i only hat to deal with complayning customers who wanted changes etc…treated you badly-rude attitude-People think you deliver shit for 5$ and treat you like idiot-if you sell for 100$ they say ohhh he must be good!-after the price went up to over 100$ i only have serious and friendly customers okay..sometimes lets say 1 out of 50 make complains.!And this is where you have to be carefull if you wanna be or stay a toprated seller:
1:Fiverr loves sellers who communicate and try the best to satisfy the customers.
2:Did someone give you a bad feedback?Means not 100% anymore:-( no chanche get a badge for toprated seller-if it is in the beginning afterwards you can keep your badge even with 98%..
but if you want the badge keep your account 100% all the time-If the customer is a JERK like many of them are in beginning-and he gave you a bad feedback even if you did your work??Just pay him back, who cares about those 5$ you lost…this might sounds unfair and a way it is…but this way your account never can get under 100%-just contact fiverr staff tell them you want to refund your customer-they will do this and at the same time remove the bad feedback..Boom your account again 100%…
If you doing graphic works never give the customer the final product before he accepted it, place a watermark on it, this way he cannot use if he trying to cheat .
Anyway its perhaps 5-10% Jerk customers-rest are cool and happy for your works.
3.you just made your first gigs on fiverr:-)
you happy and waiting for orders, the first 1-2 weeks you probably get one or two orders-then its going to get quiet around your gigs for longer time, this is because the fiverr algorythm for new gigs, in beginning showed on front page afterwards if its not selling good, it will be far far down.. you make a new gig every 14 days to be on front page under new gigs,dont just duplicate then they will cancel it-just change text but offer the same and Boom you on frontpage again!!after a while you will start getting orders again, if you gig is worth looking at!
4:always try makeing something unique.
5:If you a SEO specialist the chanche to end up as toprated seller is like 40%
you will mostly end up with level 2 badge what dosent mean you dont get customers, i have friends on fiverr SEO level 2 selling 20k gigs a month 4 employes.so all possible.
5: Communicate with your customers so much as possible!
6:Write fiverr staff sometimes ask some questions whats related to fiverr, and you cannot find anywhere…sounds stupid but fiverr have more the 5m. gigs out there Toprated sellers are handpicked from staff.-this way they will remember your name and if you lucky look into your gig.
7.Stay friendly with customers even if they jerks-afterwards if you feel insulted contact fiverr staff-never write insulting stuff for a customer even if he/she is a complete idiot.
8.Goodluck
Hope perhaps someone can use a little rom what i wrote if the starting out on fiverr.
akira007-toprated seller fiverr

Hey Akira, thanks for sharing your experience on Fiverr and congrats on being a top rated seller! Love the idea of specializing (niching out) and working with customers that are willing to pay more because they understand the value of the service. Also, resubmitting your gigs to keep your exposure up is a great tip! Lastly, totally agree with customer service and making sure you try to keep your 100% positive feedback rating.

Thanks again for sharing all of your tips and hope they help everyone (including myself) have more success selling on Fiverr!